20140129

ice skating

There are some feats of coordination at which I am horrible. Tennis is one of them. So, to match our mildly pretentious summer sport, we've taken up an equally swanky winter sport: ice skating. At least with tennis, I'm able to stay upright.

For the past few days, we've been ice skating every day, if only for short stints. About every 5 years the local lake freezes over enough to skate on it, and yesterday it opened. The lake is HUGE. Our outing consisted of meandering across it and getting back to where we started. NWC could have skated more--in fact, he literally skated circles around me as I worked my way across.

Skating on natural (or semi-natural, since the lake is man-made) bodies of water is really interesting. The ice is much rougher, which I actually like because it gives me greater stability. I also like exploring outdoors, and this is just a new venue for that. You can investigate interesting shapes that the ice makes and things that get stuck in it. Skating indoors is more about the skating itself, rather than being outside.